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Lost grandfather Eric Steward drives 370 miles to the shops

An Australian grandfather became an accidental adventurer when he took a wrong turn while going for a drive to get the milk on Monday morning, and ended up 600km (370 miles) off course on an epic road trip across Australia.

Eric Steward, 81, was visiting friends in Yass, in south-eastern New South Wales, when he went for a short drive, but took a wrong turn down a highway and ended up across the border in Geelong, just north of Melbourne in the southern state of Victoria.

It was a 600km (370 miles), nine-hour diversion – the equivalent of driving from London to Edinburgh by mistake.

”I just went out on the road to have a drive, a nice peaceful quiet drive. I didn’t know where I was going but I knew it was somewhere, and with a bit of luck I would eventually find my wife again,” Mr Steward, who suffers from slight dementia, said earlier today, still wondering what all the fuss was about.

The former navy seaman eventually realised his mistake when he began to run out of petrol. He saw Victorian police officer Clayton Smith, who had stopped at a petrol station near Geelong for a drink break with another officer near Geelong on Monday afternoon, and asked for directions to Yass.

“I was stretching my legs, waiting for (his partner) Tom to come back to the car when this little old man came up to me saying he was lost,” Leading Senior Constable Clayton Smith recalled.